Jon, I had made some contacts with GM Canada when I was working for a Chev/Olds dealership in Toronto in fact Mo Carter was the general manager there before he acquired his own dealership in Hamilton .............. Anyway my GM contacts were able to help me out in a somewhat limited way with whatever they could.

However I have heard rumors of GM engineers handing out small parts like carburetor jets axle shafts and such at the track but they never approached me with any goodies but I do remember Mark Donohue burning out his ignition wiring harness at Mid Ohio and would you believe I was the only one at the track with a spare harness. I was expecting Roger to come over to pick it up but he used Mark Schwein as an intermediary instead........Come to think of it I never got paid for that part.

Jon, That is a pretty stout group of drivers you have there....... Mo Carter was probably the biggest character on your list, Sam Posey once wrote in a magazine article that he looked like a bank manager till he got behind the wheel then he turned into an animal . One of my crew went on to work for Mo and told me about a race out west where Mo had a coolant leak and drove the car till the $20,000 ZL1 aluminum block melted rather come in for water....... In my opinion Mo was a charter member of the more money than brains club.

Great looking car I am sure we must of had the pleasure of competing against it back in the day ....Smokey was quite a character and a brilliant engineer, but I think he got carried on his interpretation of the rules on some of his projects.........

With the majority of the teams racing in the Trans-Am series being independents I think not enough credit has been given to the unsung heroes who soldiered on in inferior cars, prepared by underfunded teams for little or no compensation

Perhaps our members could reveal their favorite Drivers and why... In deference to my two drivers Robert Barg and Dick Hoffman who did more with less than anyone I know and in all fairness to others I will go outside my own team for my choice and pick one of the most exciting drivers ever to race in the Trans Am.

I will not divulge this drivers name but a very big clue is the car he drove pictured below ...............

In my opinion they were both very aggressive drivers.......... I can still remember their famous duel in the desert at Riverside in 1969, watching the two of them go at it was some of the most intense racing action that I have ever witnessed............ Sadly for Ford the Mark's Camaro prevailed and they went on to win the race and the championship.

I think that all competitors were treated equally............ Once at Mid Ohio we were cautioned on the offset off our rims ......... No problem we put the correct ones on then changed back to the good ones before the race. The whole inspection process was pretty rudimentary and I am sure that only the most obvious transgressions were scrutinized and very little if anything was acted upon.

Here is a link to a very interesting article that Sam Posey did for Hagerty about the series.

We know that the cheating went on from both the factories and the privateers who were just trying to do their best to level the playing field. The problem I see is if you tell the privateer he can't run because of a violation, it's not a big deal because there is probably some other privateer that could take his place on the grid. If you tell the factory team they're not going to be allowed to race, SCCA takes a lot of heat from both the factory affected and the track owner who is trying to sell tickets. It's the big name drivers who were driving the attendance and the big name drivers were only in the factory backed cars. It wasn't fair but the SCCA officials seemed to pick on the little guys more.

Jon, I know the SCCA was basically between a rock and the hard place and they were trying to do the best job they could with very limited resources. But unfortunately this led to some of the competitors being able to take advantage of their leniency.........Example I think we were well into our 3rd. season before anybody decided to do a displacement test before or after a race. Hell even your local Stock Car tracks had stricter inspection procedures than we did//. But you know what in the end the racing was great everyone got their monies worth and I guess that's all that really matters.

anobyte, Thanks for your comments I think your analogy is totally spot on........... With the purses dropping and waning interest in the series and I was forced to pull out of racing in 1972 . I continued to crew for Richard Hoffman on a part time basis...........My former driver Robert Barg continued to run as an independent for a few more years, while working in the revenue department for the Federal Government and Roy Bean one of my crew went on to work with the Maurice Carter Trans Am team.

At present I own a Nursery / Landscape company http://www.hollandvalley.ca and in my spare time I like to restore classic cars...see below.

Mo, Back in 1968 when I took my entire life savings and decide to go Trans-Am racing I knew that I would be in tough against the heavily fund factory teams maybe I was a bit naive but I thought that at least I would we would be racing on a level playing field............ To me when the rule books say your car has to way 2800 lbs. not 2650 or less and your engine should be 5 liters not 6 or 7 liters.........Nascar spends millions of dollars to ensure that all teams adhere to the rules and you can bet your ass that if any of their competitors were caught with an over sized engine they would be gone for the season. When we were racing back in the day we were playing to packed houses everywhere we went........ Maybe someone should have earmarked a little more of the attendance money for tech inspectors.

I do not have issues with those that use a bit of creative engineering when building their cars but I do have a problem with race teams that run oversize engines and have to add ballast at the end of the race in order to past post race inspections.